MacBook/Firewire/ExternalDrive Question

This is my first post on the forum, and I have kind of a convoluted question.

I have a new MacBook with Final Cut Pro. I usually save my scratch disks to my LaCie external hard drive. Since the MacBook does not have a FireWire port, I use a USB cable to connect the drive to the MacBook.

I was under the impression that when I was capturing footage, I could connect my camera through a FireWire cable directly into my external hard drive. However, when I do this, FCP does not recognize the camera, although the camera reads that I have the FireWire plugged in.

I been able to successfully capture footage like this on other Macs without any issues, and I'm not sure what the problem is. Is it because I have the external drive connected through a USB cable, and the camera through a FireWire? If so, is there any way for me to digitize footage onto my MacBook with a FireWire cable?

It's because the drive is connected to your MacBook via USB. You can't daisy chain USB with firewire. If your MacBook had a firewire port, and the drive was connected to the MacBook via firewire it would work. And you can not convert the firewire output from the camera to USB.